FanHouse

Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban took some time off from feuding with bloggers to provide us with a somewhat interesting look into why it's possible (and accurate) for the shot clock to occasionally show more time on it than the game clock. Initially this doesn't seem to make sense, as common sense tells you that if there are less than 24 seconds showing on the game clock (23.6, for example), then the 24 second shot clock should be turned off. But according to Cuban, that isn't the case.

When the shot clock starts counting down, it doesn't start counting at 24.0 seconds. It actually starts counting at 24.9 seconds. So when the shot clock changes from 24 to 23, that means the shot clock has counted down from 24.9 and has changed to 23.9.

This also means that when the shot clock shows 1 second left, there can be anywhere from 1.9 seconds to 1.0 seconds left. This approach allows the shot clock to go off and sound the horn as it turns from 1.0 to zero, having counted down 24 seconds from 24.9 to .9 . So there could be 1.7 seconds showing on the shot clock, .9 seconds left in the game and there still could still be a shot clock violation if a shot isnt off before there are .2 seconds left in the game.

Did you get all that? The last paragraph kind of gave me a headache, but it's basically a long-winded way of saying that, if you get down into tenths of a second, this is not only possible, but completely accurate the way the software for the clock is set up. Which, in the grand scheme of things, is just way too confusing for the casual fan.

The league should either change the way the clock counts down (from 24.9-0.9 to a less confusing 24.0 to 0.0), or add tenths of a second to the shot clock's display. Either of those options are far better than trying to explain this whole thing to your significant other during a telecast, who probably doesn't give a rat's ass about this stuff in the first place.